Celebrate the New Year with the Champagne Cluster, a cluster of galaxies seen in this new image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical telescopes.
Astronomers discovered this galaxy cluster on December 31, 2020. This date, combined with the bubble-like appearance of the galaxies and the superheated gas observed by Chandra's observations (represented in purple), inspired scientists to name the galaxy cluster the Champagne Cluster, a name that is much easier to remember than its official designation RM J130558.9+263048.4.
A new composite image shows that the Champagne Cluster is actually two clusters of galaxies in the process of merging to form an even larger cluster. Multimillion-degree gas in galaxy clusters typically takes on a roughly circular or moderately oval shape in images, but in the Champagne cluster it is more widespread from top to bottom, indicating the presence of two colliding clusters. Two clusters of individual galaxies that make up the colliding clusters can be seen above and below the center. (The image is rotated clockwise 90 degrees so that north points to the right.)
The hot gas exceeds the combined mass of all the more than one hundred individual galaxies in the newly forming cluster. The clusters also contain even larger amounts of invisible dark matter, a mysterious substance that permeates the universe.
In addition to the Chandra data, this new image contains optical data from the Legacy Surveys (red, green and blue), which consists of three separate and complementary surveys from different telescopes in Arizona and Chile.
The Champagne Cluster is a member of a rare class of merging clusters that includes the famous Bullet Cluster, where the hot gas in each cluster has collided and slowed down, and there is a clear separation between the hot gas and the most massive galaxy in each cluster.
Comparing the data with computer simulations, astronomers came up with two possibilities for the history of the Champagne cluster. First, these two clusters already collided with each other more than two billion years ago. After the collision, the two clusters moved outward and were then pulled towards each other by gravity, and are now heading for a second collision. Another idea is that one collision occurred about 400 million years ago, and after that collision the two clusters are now moving away from each other. The researchers believe that further studies of the Champagne cluster could potentially teach them how dark matter reacts to a high-speed collision.
A paper describing these results recently appeared in The Astrophysical Journal. available online. The paper's authors are Faik Bukhrik, Rodrigo Stancioli and David Wittman of the University of California, Davis.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Chandra X-ray Center monitors science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
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This release features a composite image of a galaxy cluster discovered on New Year's Eve 2020.
The cluster appears here as a large collection of bright white lights, each representing a different galaxy. A neon purple cloud stretches across the cluster's crowded core. Many of the more than one hundred galaxies in the cluster are divided into two clusters of galaxies above and below the center. Some of them are surrounded by a faint glowing haze, and a few stars in the foreground twinkle with diffraction spikes. Some of the smaller galaxies are blue, orange or red, and some appear more elongated than round, suggesting spiral shapes when viewed edge-on.
A neon purple cloud is in the center of the image, surrounding the densest part of the cluster. This cloud, which extends vertically throughout the cluster, is the multimillion-degree gas observed by Chandra. The two observed galaxy clusters and the spread of superheated gas indicate that the Champagne Cluster is actually two clusters in the process of colliding.
Thanks to two clusters of brilliant light ringing together and an auspicious discovery date, astronomers have dubbed the merged cosmic structure the “Champagne Cluster.”
Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
617-496-7998
[email protected]
Joel Wallace
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
[email protected]
